'El Gato': 6 heart attacks and more than 9 lives

George Grimm said he's been to the hospital about 40 times the past year. As a patient. He's had about a half-dozen heart attacks in the last 19 years.

"Next Memorial Day weekend will be the 20th year of my first heart attack," Grimm said.

He was just 40 years old at the time.

"I was in denial,'' Grimm said. "I'm thinking, I'm not even 40 and I'm having a heart attack?"

He's now 59 and Saturday at the Salinas Sports Complex a fund-raising barbecue will be held from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. - $10 for the barbecue, $5 for a raffle and bake sale - to help with the enormous expense of an upcoming heart and kidney transplant.

Grimm will be part of the meet-and-greet team at the barbecue.

"I didn't like the idea at first," he said. "But I'm looking at more as education. People need to know what options they have and what's available."

Grimm is something of an expert when it comes to heart attack recovery procedures.

Nurses have given him the nickname El Gato. It means "The Cat," as in the cat with nine lives. Only in Grimm's case, it's nine lives times four, and more.

He had open heart surgery in 2004, a defibrillator implant in 2007, and after surviving yet another heat attack Nov. 14 as he and his grandson were pulling into the parking lot of the Salinas Sports Complex for a youth football championship game, he received an LAVD - a Left Ventricular Assist Device - last March.

The LVAD is a pump that hooks up to the left ventricular and the other end attaches to the aorta. A tube passes from the device through the skin. The controller and power pack remain outside the body. Grimm keeps his power pack in a fisherman's vest.

It was the same sort of device that kept vice president Dick Cheney's blood flowing while he waited for a heart transplant.

Grimm's close friend, Mindy Carpenter, said the device looks like the plumbing you'd see under the kitchen sink.

But all that hasn't stopped Grimm from coaching, administrating and organizing youth baseball and football activities in the Salinas area for the past 34 years.

He coached T-ball with the Salinas Parks and Recreation Center, coached in Hartnell Little League for five years, Continental Little League for two years, coached Salinas Valley PONY baseball for 22 years and is currently the league president, was a founding member of the Monterey County PONY Intercity baseball program in 2009 that set up scheduling for teams in other cities to play each other, and was former president of the Alvarez Titans of the Monterey Bay Youth Football League.

"I do it for the kids whose parents don't show up," Grimm said. "They drop their kids off and don't show up. For whatever reason they don't have time for their kids."

He received some valuable advice a long time ago from Bob Chernetsky, a former high school baseball coach who did the near-impossible in 1995 when he took the Alisal baseball team to the 1995 MTAL title.

"He told me you can lead a kid to the path where there is a right way and wrong way to go," Grimm said. "Your job is to lead them to the path, that's why I'm here. You can't walk them down the path, but you can lead them there."

Grimm's path to recovery will be better known later this month. If all goes well he will get the final approval for the transplant from Stanford University Medical Center doctors Oct. 25.

"They may not do the kidney at the same time they do the heart," Grimm said. "There are so many drugs that have to pass through the kidney that are needed for the heart."

Especially when you have a heart as big as George Grimm's.

George Watkins is a sports writer for The Salinas Californian. He can be reached at gwatkins@thecalifornian.com and 754-4264. He can also be followed on Twitter at watkins_sal news.

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'El Gato': 6 heart attacks and more than 9 lives

George Grimm said he's been to the hospital about 40 times the past year. As a patient. He's had about a half-dozen heart attacks in the last 19 years.